An unidentified Tucson man stepped in front of a train yesterday afternoon and that's where he stayed until it ran him over. He died and cops suspect it wasn't an accident.
About 1:30 p.m. yesterday, the 45-year-old man was seen stepping in front of an oncoming train. Witnesses told police the man remained on the tracks even as the train's engineer was repeatedly blowing the train's whistle and flashing its lights.
Witnesses say the engineer tried to stop the train but was unable to do so before hitting the man.
It's unclear how fast the train was going when the man was hit, but it
was going fast enough to kill him -- he died later at an area hospital.
Cops suspect the man's death was a suicide.
This has been a particularly deadly year in Arizona for train-related injuries -- Flagstaff leading the way.
In 2009, there were 17 train-related injuries in the Grand Canyon State.
This latest death is the 19th train-human incident this year and the
sixth death.
The tracks in Flagstaff played host to two of those deaths in less than a month.
In August, a man jumped onto a moving train from a bridge crossing in what cops determined was a suicide.
About three weeks earlier, another man, 47-year-old Johnnie
Augustine, wasn't looking to kill himself, rather, he
was hammered and thought he could win a race with a train. Unfortunately
for Augustine, he was the silver medalist in that race.
Morals of the story: you can't win a race with a train, and
suicide-by-train is up there with the worst possible ways to kill
yourself.
